


Puzzle Pieces

by wilderwisdom



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 08:38:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilderwisdom/pseuds/wilderwisdom





	Puzzle Pieces

She hoped that if she stared at the pieces long enough, _somehow_ they would coalesce, and rearrange themselves into something resembling order. If she stared at the shattered fragments of her world long enough, they would start to make sense.

Nothing had gone right, not since the universe shook and the puzzle fell off the table and scattered. She'd felt her sanity go with it, breaking apart and scuttling away with the expelled bits of the world to hide away in their separate dark nooks and corners. Perhaps, if she got enough of them together, in the same place, at the same time, they might click again, become whole. So she hunted and horded the slivers of her consciousness, clutching them back as they rattled and fussed to evade her. Some days, it was a struggle to hang on to them, but hang on she did, tenaciously. Sometimes, a few slipped away, and she tore her hair in frustrated despair, for who knew if she'd ever get them back again? Those days were hard. But resolutely she continued to search for the misplaced facets of her sanity, and stored them away in cryogenic tanks where they would be safe. She wrestled with the clues, to make them fit, to force them together—they _would_ yield, they were _her_ , she could make herself obey, couldn't she? The differing planes of the various pieces acted as lenses: the more of them she got in the barrel, the sharper the image became, the colors brighter. But the closer she got, the harder it became, as if the mirrored fragments were opposing magnets. Forcing them together only caused further distortion, and made her sick besides. So they bounced around, uninhibited molecules of gas, chaotic, methodless. If she lost the pieces of the puzzle, she knew, she lost herself, and so she waited in stalemate, climbing a Jacob's Ladder of clouded memory and day-old premonitions, the algorithms and corollaries to a myriad of paradoxes. If she could just find _all her pieces...!_ As it was, they did not obey, and she did not obey. She watched from behind the glazed-over windows reaching down into her soul, not really paying attention—when the pain made her cognizant enough, she forgot to. When the pain left and the haze descended in its stead, no matter how she struggled it was all in vain. She understood; she didn't comprehend.

If she stared at these broken bits long enough, they would start to make sense. They _had_ to.


End file.
